


room to breathe

by Suicix



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, alternatively: hurt/attempts at comfort, i wrote this and made myself feel Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4893370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suicix/pseuds/Suicix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The announcement on the website says the company's <i>come to terms</i> with their release. Coming to terms feels like the last thing possible right now.</p><p>Set 12th June 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	room to breathe

**Author's Note:**

> the tag "i wrote this and made myself Sad" basically encompasses how i feel about this. very sad. i started this quite a while ago, but it's finally done and here. in the future, i am really going to have to write something of this ship which is both happy and not too noticeably set in an au.
> 
> i'm pretty sure this is only rated t because drew swears so much, but he's bitter and angry and so am i. still.

Drew’s barely spoken, not since the phone call. Jinder’s not going to try and get the words out of him, not now. Not until Drew’s ready to talk about it himself. He can’t be pushed into it.

They couldn’t have seen this coming yesterday. Yesterday was typical: travelling from the city that hosted Smackdown to their apartment, a quiet evening after the TV tapings were finished for the week. They didn’t quite realise that it would be the end of TV tapings for them for the foreseeable future, not just for the week.

 _Released_. The company put it like that as if they’re doing them a favour. In any other job they’d use the word _fired_ straight out. Jinder feels like he’s been fired out of a cannon with no idea where he’ll land. He could end up on the ground and shatter into some innumerable number of pieces, could land in the sea and sink to the bottom. Or he could just keep hurtling through the air for eons, never landing, never coming back to reality. That seems to be the most appealing option right about now.

He decides that going about his day as normal would be best, but swaps out a run for an extra half hour at the gym instead. The gym has equipment and machinery he can occupy himself with. All running has is him alone with his thoughts, thoughts which are far too filled with worry and resentment to even attempt to face right now. He doesn’t want to think about the future, doesn’t want to think about anything. Usually the place for his mind to go when he feels like this is Drew, but all thinking about his boyfriend right now will do is circle his thoughts back to what he’s so desperately trying to avoid.

When he gets home and doesn’t find Drew anywhere inside, he guesses Drew’s stayed out on the tiny, closed-in balcony all day. Just stayed sitting there with nothing but his own thoughts on how his whole world is coming crashing down around him. Jinder can’t imagine why Drew would want to do that – surely it’s best to do something to at least attempt to get your mind off the matter rather than just dwell over it – but he doesn’t go out to disrupt him. When Drew wants to come inside, to face the fact that they’re both going to have to deal with this, he will.

It gets to the evening. Drew’s still out there, still hasn’t come inside to do as much as use the bathroom. Jinder makes dinner – maybe Drew will come inside for that – and he goes to tell Drew, but Drew just gives a single nod, his hair shrouding his face, not even turning to look up at Jinder.

“I’ll leave what’s left in the refrigerator,” Jinder says, and he waits for Drew to nod again until leaving. It takes a while.

And of course it takes even longer for Drew to eventually come inside.

It’s late by this time, and Jinder’s just about considering actually going to sleep when the bedroom door clicks open and closed and Drew’s there on the other side of the room.

His eyes are ever so slightly rimmed with red, Jinder realises – _has he been crying_? Tears of fury and frustration, no doubt, and it pains Jinder to think about it. Drew shouldn’t be driven to this, shouldn’t be pushed to the point of tears. He certainly shouldn’t feel like he has to do it without anyone there to comfort him, but it’s not as if he’d ever want anyone to see him like this in the first place.

Now he’s here, though, he’s here in their bedroom, and Jinder can at least make an attempt to make him feel better. He’s good at that – usually it doesn’t take much for Drew to burst into a smile and lean in for a kiss – but now it seems an impossible feat.

He watches as Drew steps over to the bed, as he takes a seat on it but doesn’t yet get under the duvet. Now that Drew’s closer, it’s easier to read his expression, and – _oh shit_. He probably has been crying. It’s not exactly a frequent event – very far from it, in fact – but Jinder knows what it looks like.

“Let it out,” he says, because he knows Drew needs to.

Drew takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to find the right words, like he’s trying to find some acceptable way of getting it all out without sounding _bitter_ or _angry_ or anything that might dampen his chances of ever going back, but then he seems to remember that Jinder’s the only one there to hear him. There’s fire in Drew’s eyes, a different one to what Jinder usually sees: raging more furiously than any storm could ever hope to. He’s going to let himself be bitter, be angry.

“I should have been something. I was _supposed_ to be something. I was supposed to be. I have more to offer than... than... fuck. I’m not even gonna bother. I’m sure you can work out who I’m talking about. I just... I don’t know. I was supposed to be something, and they made me nothing. Made _us_ nothing. Our last matches were losses to El fucking Torito.”

“Hey,” Jinder says, frowning, “the guy’s a great wrestler.”

“Exactly! That’s what’s so bad about it. It shouldn’t be humiliating, but it is. It shouldn’t be like, something that gets laughed at, but there’s old Mr McMahon up there in his office guffawing over it. Chosen one my _arse_. They fucked me right over, they did. Both of us. Everyone. Everyone still there no–” Drew stops in the middle of the word, as if he’s going to be found out, somehow.

“You can say what you want, you know,” Jinder tells him. “No-one’s here to hear it but me.”

“No, I... I can’t. There’s too much. I’d just... I’d just end up exploding or something. And we don’t want that.” Drew manages what sounds like a fraction of a laugh, but it’s a cross between that and a sob. “I should just carry on about us. That’s what matters now, doesn’t it? Or doesn’t matter, apparently. Got rid of us before even finishing the week of shows, too, and we’re _there_ on the unaired stuff, for God’s sake. There’ll be us ringside for Heath on Superstars tonight. Us on Friday Night fucking _Smackdown_ , I...”

He breaks off again. The look on his face is one of absolute despair, like he’s unsure of not just what to say but how to even breathe.

“You know you’ll be OK, don’t you? Everywhere is gonna want you. Now you can – you can actually show off everything you never got to over the last couple of years. Everything you were forced to hold back. New – new opportunities!” Jinder hates to hear himself say it, because he knows what Drew wants is all those opportunities that he was forced to miss, and because he knows it isn’t going to be like that for him.

Drew doesn’t reply to that. He doesn’t react to it at all. He must know it’s true, there’s no way he doesn’t, but he doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge it in the slightest.

The silence stretches on.

“We’ll have to go home,” Drew suddenly says, and Jinder frowns at him.

“We are home,” he says simply. “Me and you, here at home in our apartment.”

“No, I mean... I mean _home_ home. Canada. Fucking _Scotland_.”

“Oh.” Jinder hadn’t thought of that. “Oh,” he says again, computing that this means he’ll be away from Drew for – he doesn’t know how long.

“I know,” Drew answers, because even if Jinder’s response was only a single word, one that hardly even says anything, he can tell just what was meant by it. “I don’t – I don’t wanna be a whole ocean away from you.”

Jinder doesn’t want that either. It’s not fair, that they’re going to be torn away from each other at the time they need each other most. He just holds out an arm, lets Drew collapse into him.

They stay like that for a while: another silence, except this one is easier, somehow. Just as melancholy as the last, but now that they’re close, now that they’re touching, it feels less heavy. Less suffocating.

Still, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need breaking.

“Why don’t you go take a shower, huh?” Jinder says, squeezing his arm where it’s wrapped around Drew. “You’ll feel better. Then come back to bed.”

Drew nods, silent.

“Right,” he says, the word just about a whisper, and he leans in to kiss Jinder on the cheek before straightening up and getting off the bed. “OK.”

Jinder watches as he leaves for the bathroom, that figure he usually sees move with such confidence and poise suddenly so downhearted and despondent. It kills him. It really does.

As much as he loves Drew, though, he’s got himself to think about too. He won’t have as many promotions calling him up and asking him to have matches and making appearances as Drew will, he knows he won’t, so he has to work even harder.

Even so, that doesn’t mean that Drew won’t have any weight to bear. Maybe not as much, and a different kind, but of course he has a right to be miserable about it.

Jinder just hopes he won’t be the one to end up doing all the carrying.


End file.
